To the Lake

by Yana Vagner

  He stood in our lounge, which now had its lights on, squinting at the brightness; he wore Sergey’s old shooting jacket, which had seen better days, and a pair of felt winter boots with no overshoes which had oozed a small but growing puddle on the warm floor. Sergey lurched forward towards him but then stopped, and they both froze a step apart and didn’t embrace. Instead, both turned to me and I stood between them and hugged them both. Through the warm, thick smells of smoke and cigarettes I smelled alcohol, and I thought it was bizarre he’d made it here without being stopped, but then it dawned on me that it was unlikely anyone was bothered about policing minor roads these days. I pressed my cheek against the worn collar of his coat and said:

  ‘It’s so good that you came. Are you hungry?’

  In a quarter of an hour, fried eggs were sizzling on the cooker and all of us, including Mishka, who was desperately trying to stay awake, sat around the kitchen table. It was half past four now and the kitchen was full of the appalling smell of Boris’s cigarettes – he only smoked the cheap and strong Java brand and waved away Sergey’s offer of Kent. While the food was cooking, they’d had time for one shot of vodka each, and when I put the steaming food in front of them and Sergey wanted to pour another one, Boris unexpectedly covered his glass with his large hand and nicotine-stained fingers and said: ‘Enough of the high life for me, I think. I came to tell you kids that you’re idiots. What the hell are you doing in this glass house, frying eggs and pretending everything is OK, eh? You didn’t even lock your gate. I know your fancy gate, and the rickety fence, if you can call it that, and this whole apology for a safe house won’t stop a child from breaking in, but still, I expected you to be smarter than that.’

  He was half-joking, but his eyes were serious. I noticed that his hand, holding another cigarette, was shaking from tiredness and the ashes were falling straight onto the plate with the fried egg. His face was grey and there were dark circles around his eyes. Wearing a jumper of an indefinable colour, with an overstretched collar (probably Sergey’s too), thick trousers and felt boots, which he hadn’t even thought to take off, sitting in our stylish, modern kitchen, he looked like a huge, exotic bird. The three of us sat around him like scared children, catching every word he was saying.

  ‘I was hoping that I wouldn’t find you here, that you had enough brains to understand what’s going on and had boarded up your silly doll’s house and run away,’ he said, cutting off half the fried egg with his fork and holding it up in the air. ‘But, since I know your unthinking carelessness of old, I decided to check if I was right and, unfortunately, I was.’

  We were silent – there was nothing to say. Boris looked regretfully at the fried egg shaking on his fork, put it back down and moved the plate away. It was obvious that he was looking for words, and part of me already knew what he wanted to say, and to delay the moment I moved to get up and clear the table, but Boris made a motion with his hand to stop me and said:

  ‘Wait, Anya, it won’t take long. The city was closed two weeks ago.’ He sat with his hands folded in front of him and his head bent. ‘And it’s been just over two months since the first people got infected – if, of course, they’re not lying to us. I don’t know how many people needed to die before they decided to close the city, but given that they turned the phones off, everything’s happening faster than they were expecting.’ He lifted his head and looked at us. ‘Come on, kids, look more intelligent. Have you never heard of mathematical modelling of epidemic diseases?’

  ‘Yes, I remember, Dad,’ said Sergey.

  ‘What’s modelling of epidemic diseases?’ Mishka asked. His eyes were wide with surprise.

  ‘It’s an old technique, Mishka,’ Boris said, looking at me. ‘It was in use even in the seventies, when I worked at the research institute. I know I’m out of practice now, but I should think the general principles are still the same. I still remember it – it’s like riding a bike. Once you learn, you don’t forget it. Briefly, it depends on the disease – the way it spreads, how infectious it is, how long its incubation period is, and what the death rate is. What also counts is what the government does to fight the disease. Back then we made calculations for seventeen infections, from bubonic plague to common flu. I’m not a doctor, I’m a mathematician, and I don’t know much about this new virus and I’m not going to bore you with differential equations, but judging by how quickly the situation is progressing, the quarantine hasn’t helped. Instead of getting better, people are dying, and dying fast. Maybe the authorities are not using the right medicine, maybe they don’t have anything to treat it with, or maybe they’re still looking for the way to treat it, whatever it is. I don’t think the city has died yet, but it’ll die soon. And before the chaos begins, I’d try to get away as far as possible if I were you.’

  ‘What chaos?’ I asked, and then Sergey spoke.

  ‘They’ll try to get out of the city, Anya – those who aren’t ill yet, together with those who are already infected but don’t know it, and they’ll also bring those who are already ill, because they can’t leave them behind. They’ll go past our house, they’ll knock on our door and ask for water or food, or to let them stay overnight, and as soon as you agree to do any of that, you’ll get infected.’

  ‘And if you don’t agree, Anya,’ said Boris, ‘they might get upset with you. The situation as it stands doesn’t sound very promising.’

  ‘How much time do you think we have, Dad?’ Sergey asked.

  ‘Not much. I think a week max, if it’s not too late already. I know I had a go at you, but I’m no better. What was I thinking? I should have come to you straight away, as soon as they announced the quarantine, instead of binge drinking in my village. I’ve brought some stuff with me – not everything that’s needed, of course, I didn’t have much cash on me, and I was in a hurry, so we’ll have to scramble to get away as soon as possible. Sergey, open the gate, I need to bring my car in. I’m afraid the old banger won’t make it if I drive her again. For the last few kilometres I was seriously worried I’d have to walk the rest of the way.’

  And while he was getting up and rummaging through his pockets for the keys, I looked at him and thought that this clumsy, loud man, who we’d forgotten about and hadn’t called once to check on since the epidemic had started, this man had left his safe village, loaded the car with his simple possessions and was prepared to dump it in the middle of nowhere if the twenty-year-old Niva died, and to walk in the freezing cold to make sure we were still here, and to make us do what he thought would save our lives. I looked at Sergey and saw that he was thinking the same. I thought he was going to speak, but he simply took the keys from Boris and went outside.

  When the door closed behind him, the three of us stayed in the kitchen. Boris sat down, looked at me, unsmiling, and said:

  ‘You don’t look great, Anya. And your mum?’

  I felt my face crumpling and quickly shook my head. He took my hand and blundered on:

  ‘Have you heard from Ira and Anton?’

  I felt my tears drying up before I’d even started crying, because I had forgotten, completely forgotten, about Sergey’s first wife and their five-year-old, Anton. I pressed my hand to my mouth and shook my head, horrified. He frowned and asked, ‘Do you think he’ll agree to leave without them?’ before answering his own question: ‘Although first we need to know exactly where we’re going.’

  We didn’t talk any more that night: when Sergey came back into the house, bent under the weight of the huge canvas rucksack, Boris jumped to his feet to help, quickly giving me a warning glance, and the conversation stopped. For the next half hour, both of them – stamping hard on the mat outside to shake the snow off their boots every time they returned – brought in Boris’s luggage from the Niva, which was now parked outside the house, as well as some bags, sacks and canisters. Sergey suggested leaving some of the stuff in the car (‘We don’t need it right now, Dad’) but Boris was adamant, and soon the whole of his motley belongings were piled in
the study, where he insisted he wanted to sleep, refusing the bed linen I offered him.

  ‘No need to make up a bed, Anya,’ he said. ‘I’ll be fine on the sofa. We don’t have much time left for sleep anyway. Lock the doors and go to bed, we’ll talk again in the morning.’ Then, still in his felt boots, he trotted into the study, leaving a wet trail behind him, and shut the door.

  His orders to call it a day were what was needed. First, without saying a word, Mishka went off to bed and I heard his door shut upstairs. Sergey locked the front door and left for bed too. I went through every room downstairs, turning off the lights. Ever since we moved here, this had become one of my favourite routines. After guests left, or after our usual, peaceful family evening together, I would wait until Sergey and Mishka had gone to bed and then empty the ashtrays, remove the dishes from the table, adjust the cushions on the sofa, have a last cigarette in a quiet, warm kitchen, and retreat up the stairs, leaving behind the cosy, sleepy darkness. Then I’d stand outside Mishka’s door for a while, and finally enter our dark airy bedroom, take off my clothes, slip under the blanket and cuddle up to Sergey’s warm back.

  ‌3

  First Blood

  I awoke and looked towards the window, trying to work out what time it was, but because it was one of those grey semi-dark November mornings, it was impossible to tell whether it was morning or afternoon. The other half of the bed was empty, and for some time I lay listening: the house was quiet. Nobody had woken me up, and for a few moments I was fighting the temptation to close my eyes and go to sleep again, as I’d often done over the previous few days, but then I made myself get out of bed, drape a dressing gown over my shoulders and come downstairs. I was right – the house was empty. The kitchen smelled of Boris’s cigarettes again, and among various breakfast leftovers there was a cafetière, still warm. I poured myself a cup of coffee and started gathering the plates from the table, and then I heard the front door slam. Boris entered the kitchen.

  ‘The car’s given up the ghost,’ he said in a triumphant tone, as if he was glad his expectations had been fulfilled. ‘We’ll have to dump the old jalopy here. Good job you both have four-by-fours. I don’t know what we’d do if you had girly yogurt pots on wheels.’

  ‘Good morning, Boris,’ I said. ‘Where are Sergey and Mishka?’

  He came up and put his hand on my shoulder. ‘We didn’t want to wake you, Anya, you looked so exhausted last night. Come on, drink up your coffee, we’ve got a lot to do, you and I. I sent Sergey and Mishka to do some shopping. Don’t worry, they won’t get any further than Zvenigorod, not that they need to, anyway. We’ve got a long list, but we can get everything locally. If we’re lucky and our neighbours haven’t worked out yet what they need to stock up on instead of vermouth and pitted olives, we’ll manage to get everything we need in a couple of days and leave.’

  ‘Where could we go?’

  ‘The most important thing is to leave here. You’re too close to the city, Anya, and it’s best to be as far away as possible. Sergey and I talked earlier and decided that to start with we’ll go to my place in Levino – after all, it’s two hundred kilometres from Moscow, it’s a small village, far from the road, there’s a river, woods, good hunting prospects. We’ll go there first, and see.’

  In daylight, in the usual comfort of our kitchen – the smell of coffee, plates on the table, breadcrumbs, Mishka’s orange hoodie draped over the back of a chair – everything that had been discussed at this table last night seemed so untrue, so surreal. I heard a car going past. I imagined Boris’s poky, dark, two-roomed house, which would somehow have to accommodate us all after our sensible, comfortable world, but I had no energy to argue with him.

  ‘What shall I do?’ I asked. He had presumably guessed what I was thinking by the expression on my face and was relieved that I didn’t object.

  ‘Don’t worry, Anya, it’ll be like going for a ride in the country. It’s not as if you had plans, is it,’ he said amicably. ‘And if by any chance I’m wrong, you can always come back. Let’s go and see where you keep your warm clothes – I’ve made a list. Try and think if you want to take anything else.’

  Within an hour, our bedroom floor was covered in tidy piles of clothes – warm jackets, woollen socks, jumpers, underwear. Boris was particularly pleased with the solid sheepskin-lined boots which Sergey had bought for both Mishka and me before we went to Lake Baikal. ‘You guys are not completely hopeless!’ he declared, holding them up. I kept bringing clothes from the wardrobe and he sorted them out. From time to time I would come to the window and look at the road; it was getting darker and I was eager for Sergey and Mishka to come home soon. The light went on in the house opposite. When I went to the window again I noticed a man’s silhouette on the balcony. It was Lenny, coming outside for a smoke, as Marina wouldn’t let him light up indoors. When he saw me he waved, and I thought, again, that I must finally buy some blackout curtains – when we’d moved to the countryside we hadn’t been prepared for the fact that our neighbours could see everything happening in our house, until Lenny, in his usual unceremonious manner, said to Sergey, ‘Since you guys moved here it’s been a lot more fun to smoke on the balcony. It’s bloody great to live next door to newlyweds!’ I waved back, and heard Boris say behind my back:

  ‘That’s enough clothes, Anya. Let’s see what kind of medicines you’ve got.’

  I was about to turn away from the window when I saw a green military-style truck stopping near Lenny’s automatic gate.

  The driver was a man in camouflage overalls and a black beanie. I could see his white mask through the windscreen. The door banged and another man jumped out of the truck. He was dressed identically to the first one and had a machine gun hanging over his shoulder. He dropped his unfinished cigarette, crushed it out on the pavement with the tip of his boot, then walked over to Lenny’s gate and pulled it. It didn’t give; it was locked. I looked up at Lenny and pointed down at the truck, but he’d already noticed it and was now closing the balcony door. Half a minute later the gate opened and I saw Lenny in the gateway. He had a jacket thrown over his shoulders. I saw him stretch his hand to greet the man in camouflage, who ignored the gesture and stepped back, waving his machine gun towards Lenny, as if ordering him to move out of the way. The canvas cover of the truck opened, the side dropped, and another man jumped down, also wearing a mask and carrying a machine gun. He didn’t come up to the gate but stayed near the truck.

  For some time, nothing happened. Lenny stood framed in the gateway. He retracted his hand but carried on smiling. They were talking, and I could only see the back of the man in camouflage.

  ‘What’s going on, Anya?’ Boris called from inside. ‘Are they back?’ The man with Lenny took several quick steps towards him and pushed him in the chest with the muzzle of the machine gun, and they both disappeared behind the gate. Seconds later, the other man who had jumped out of the truck followed them inside. I couldn’t see anything behind Lenny’s three-metre-high fence, but I heard Lenny’s dog barking and then a strange, short, dry bang which I immediately realised was a gunshot, although it sounded nothing like those rolling echoing volleys from Hollywood films and Mishka’s computer games. I dashed to open the window, not realising why I was doing it, but somehow it was important for me to look out and see what was going on. Another man wearing a mask jumped out of the truck and ran through the gate, and the next thing I felt was a heavy hand on my shoulder, pulling me back and nearly making me fall over.

  ‘Anya, get away from the window and don’t even think of leaning out.’

  Boris, swearing, ran down to the ground floor. I heard his heavy steps on the stairs, and then the door of the study slammed shut. I was scared to stay alone, and ducked down to follow him, but as soon as I reached the staircase I saw him running back up. He was holding a rectangular black plastic case, which he was struggling to open while running, swearing under his breath. I pressed myself against the wall and let him go past me back to the bedroom and
then followed him, as if drawn by a magnet, back to the window.

  Without turning, he waved his arm furiously at me, and I stepped back and froze behind him, peering over his shoulder. I still couldn’t see anything, but through the open window I heard Marina’s high-pitched screaming, and two men came out through the gate. They were walking slowly, unhurriedly, carrying Lenny’s huge flat-screen TV. The cables were dragging behind them on the snow. One of them had a pearl-grey fur coat over his shoulder, and something else I couldn’t quite see – I think it was a handbag. While these two were messing about near the truck, putting their loot inside, the third one came out. He stood there for a split second, holding a machine gun pointed inside Lenny’s gate, and then turned towards our house. I had a feeling he was looking me straight in the eye. For a second I thought it was Semionov, the young boy with the dark pockmarks where the mask didn’t cover his face, the one Sergey and I had seen a week earlier at the quarantine cordon. I automatically stepped towards the window to be able to see him better and tripped over an open plastic case, and then Boris, who was standing near the window, turned to me and shouted angrily:

  ‘Anya, fuck it, will you move away now!’

  I collapsed onto the floor and then finally looked up at him. He was holding a long hunting rifle which smelled strongly of gun oil; he cocked the trigger and, squatting, stuck the barrel out through the open window, resting his elbow on the windowsill.

  I heard a dull, metal thud which sounded as if the Semionov lookalike was trying to kick our gate down. During the two years we’d been living here, we’d never got round to getting a proper bell at the gate, and now I was pleased we hadn’t. People who want to break in shouldn’t be given the opportunity to ring the doorbell. To hear a sweet chime (I particularly liked the one which sounded like somebody hitting a copper plate with a little hammer, bo-bong) would be totally inappropriate now after the gunshot, after Marina’s screaming, after what I had seen from the window; kicking the thin metal gate fitted the picture better. Boris moved but didn’t lean out of the window. Instead, he pressed himself against the wall and shouted: ‘Hey, you lot, look up!’ and, quickly freeing his hand from the rifle, he tapped on the window glass.